Dennis Day Tries It Again

One of the many running jokes on the Jack Benny radio show was singer Dennis Day had two shows (and that somehow made him—“HA!”—superior).

With the passage of a few years, Day had no shows.

A Day in the Life of Dennis Day debuted on October 3, 1946 on NBC. It was a sitcom where Dennis Day played Dennis Day, but not THE Dennis Day. He played a small-town shy-boy with the same name as the singer, which enabled the producers to bring in a cast not associated with the Benny show.

The series carried on (called The Dennis Day Show after a story-line and cast change) until Colgate-Palmolive decided to pull some of its money out of radio. First, sports spinner Bill Stern. Then sometime-hillbilly singer Judy Canova. Then Dennis Day. All of them were told by the tooth-powder maker to take a powder. Dennis’ last show was June 30, 1951 and he was replaced with two obscure announcers from Boston named Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding.

Network radio may have been sputtering but it wasn’t quite dead. Day was still a bankable commodity. Not only was he still with Benny, but he was appearing at state fairs and nightclubs/casinos, recording for RCA-Victor and performing occasionally in films.

So it was that The Billboard trumpeted in its May 29, 1954 issue that Day was coming back to radio on Sunday, Sept. 19 from 5:30 to 6 p.m. as Nutrilite decided to push its food supplement on the air. Now, Dennis was singing about pills of parsley (with watercress and alfalfa).

You’d think a return to the radio dial would have resulted in all kinds of newspaper wire service or columnist interviews. But in 1954, radio wasn’t a big deal any more. I haven’t been able to find one with Dennis promoting his coming show. Instead, there were publicity department profiles of Day, some with “Paid Advt.” at the bottom.

In the meantime, Day, like Jack Benny, jumped into television. In September 1951, he turned down on offer to front a Monday through Friday daytime show on CBS-TV (similar to what future Benny bandleader Bob Crosby had been doing). Instead, he was given a spot on prime time, starting November 23, for RCA-Victor. But he couldn’t have been given a worse spot on prime time, and even joked (in song) about it in his club act. The show died (in a rerun) on August 2, 1954, thanks to Benny’s real-life next door neighbour.

Here’s what columnist Earl Wilson wrote for publication Jan. 27, 1955. Day was performing in New York; this explains his absences from the Benny radio show in its final season. Day’s engagement at the Copa had been delayed from September as his wife was having their fifth child. The Bing Crosby episode Day refers to aired March 16, 1947.

That sweet Irish lad from the Bronx, Eugene Patrick McNulty—"Dennis Day"—has been dispensing a few truths at the Copacabana.
He confesses publicly that Lucy and Desi knocked him out of television.
"I had the program that people switched off to turn them on,” admits the father of five (Patrick, Dennis, Michael, Margaret and Eileen).
"I was replaced by Medic," he further testifies there on the cafe floor. "I made NBC sick—and they cashed in on it."
* * *
Such frankness is unusual in these days when everybody boasts about a rating.
Later in his suite at the Hotel 14, Dennis said:
“I wasn't kidding. This year Lucy and Desi are down to about a 56. Down! That'd be going up for everybody else.”
Right now NBC's working on a new TV show for him. He trusts he doesn't have to go on opposite Jackie Gleason. He lasted a year against "Lucy" and a year against Ozzie and Harriet [1952-53 season].
Yet many think of him as that nice young chap who's frequently on with Jack Benny.
And with permission of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, he'll tell a tale about that.
“Jack and Bing Crosby used to swap guest appearances on radio—it didn't cost either one anything,” Dennis recalled.
* * *
“Once Bing was on Jack's show and didn’t know we were on 'live.' He didn't start out very good.
“Suddenly he said, 'Who the hell picked this key Dennis Day?' ”
It was heard round the country and Bing—who'd played a cleric in two previous films—was worried and asked Dennis if he should do something.
“I don't know, but in your next picture, you'll be wearing a tie,” prophesied Dennis.
* * *
Watching Dennis perform—he has a pleasant manner—I was struck by the durability of Jack Benny's "cheap" joke.
For not only does Jack still use it after all these years, but so does Dennis. He mentions that Jack has a sign in his bathroom reading LSMFT.
Translated: "Leave Some Money For Towels."
And who perpetuates this one joke? J. B. himself. He sent Dennis a telegram saying: “I would come to your opening, only I understand they have a minimum.”

The debut show got reviews in The Billboard, Variety and Broadcasting-Telecasting. They were mixed. Here’s what Variety wrote on Sept. 22, 1954:

DENNIS DAY SHOW
With Rosemary Clooney, Jimmy Durante, guests; Jimmy Wallington, Robert Armbruster Orch.
Producer-director; Fred R. Levings
Writers: Irving Taylor, Allan Wood
30 Mins.; Sun., 5:30 p.m.
MYTINGER & CASSELBERRY
NBC, from Hollywood (transcribed)
(Dan B. Miner)
Dennis Day, out of the video ranks this season, is back in radio and with one of those current rarities in network broadcasting, weekly half-hour sponsor. Bankroller is Nutrilite, the food supplement; and this alone points up the changes that have taken place in AM from the time when a big-name variety segment in prime Sunday time would have no other bankroller than one of the top 10 food, soap or tobacco spenders.
Another change is the fact that Day is formatted in a show that five years ago would have been rated a good one, but today shapes as no more than satisfactory. It’s a straight comedy-variety segment, leaning heavily on guest stars, along with Day’s impressions and singing and the traditional byplay among the comedian, announcer Jimmy Wallington and bandleader Robert Armbruster. All of which adds up to pleasant though un-exciting entertainment which provides little incentive for redialing.
Guests on the opener were Jimmy Durante and Rosemary Clooney, the latter soloing “All the Pretty Little Horses”, and dueting with Day on “Light of the Silvery Moon” and the former running through his familiar paces with the band on “Inka Dinka Doo.” Day joined him on the latter with a carbon of Durante’s voice, and this combined with some evident adlibbing by Durante made the turn a funny one. Day soloed “From This Moment On” and “September Song” and reprised “Moon” as the Ronald Colman’s would sound.
How long the show will remain a fixture on NBC is hard to say, what with the shaky state of half-hour sponsorships in network radio. Program itself does little to insure its own longevity. Chan.

Day relied on his Benny connection for the show. Benny guest-starred on the Jan. 16, 1955 episode, with guest shots by Eddie (Rochester) Anderson, Mel Blanc (two appearances), Sara Berner and Andy Devine.

Murdo Mackenzie was brought in to direct the show by the start of 1955, and George “Ballad of Gilligan’s Island” Wile took over as musical director, but, like the Benny radio show, its days (no pun intended) were numbered. Neither returned for the 1955-56 season. Magee Adams from the Cincinnati Enquirer of Feb. 28 explained:

FROM THAT ever-present source of information, the trade grapevine, comes a report that the Dennis Day show is to be dropped by its commercial sponsor March 13. According to the now fashionable view, this just goes to show why radio networks are having economic difficulties.
As that sort of thing goes, Dennis Day’s Sunday evening airing on NBC-WLW Radio is an ambitious variety show. In addition to the star, it has been making liberal use of “name” guests, for musical and comedy acts. On the drawing board, this is a formula that simply couldn’t miss, but taking it by ear discloses something else about the show.
As its star, Dennis Day evidently believes that the height of entertainment is a low of dialect impersonations wearily reminiscent of the “life of the party” kind of thing. And the guest acts have been shrunk to a mold as just meager. In short, the show’s variety formula has everything except an idea with enough entertainment muscle to lift it out of its adolescent groove.
For Dennis Day, this is no novelty. He scored with a previous radio flop with a purported comedy patterned after his witless youth role in the Jack Benny show. But it might have been expected that this mistake would not be repeated twice.
It is not the fault of radio that the Dennis Day show failed to satisfy its commercial sponsor. More clearly than some of the other examples, it demonstrates the oldest and most familiar principal in broadcasting—there is no substitute for program quality. In 1955, you might suppose this would not need proving.

Day could have used one of those Irish good luck shamrocks. Three days after Nutrilite lowered the boom on his show, and the day after St. Patrick's Day, he ended up in hospital with pneumonia and had to cancel his shot on a big NBC colour show on the 27th where he would play all the characters in Allen’s Alley with Fred Allen (Allen, for his part, joked to the UP’s Vernon Scott that Day should have been treated on Medic).

Plans for another go at a TV series (including one where the pilot was to be shot at the Copa) fizzled, so Day had to be content with guest appearances in addition to the rounds of show-rooms, recording studios, fairs and maternity wards. He was lauded by everyone, it seems, as a nice man and a wily investor, and always gave credit to Jack Benny for his success.